New Domains

Last night I purchased two new domains, maplesfortunes.ca and maplesfortunes.com. I am also working on a redesign. Upon completion of the redesign, the new URL will be maplesfortunes.com. Using any of the other urls will still get you here, and for some links it will be the url. However, the true URL and the one WordPress will use will be maplesfortunes.com. What difference does this make to you, you ask. Well, really not a whole lot. You may have to update your RSS feed, but I think other than that, not a whole lot.

Oh, and I upgraded to WordPress 2.2 today.

Hosting at Site5

Okay, so here is the deal. I’m currently being hosted at Site5. I love it. I have never had any problems with them, unlike my other crappy hosting company. They have this wicked awesome back end they call Backstage and it is so easy to use. It looks awesome too. They are also very nicely priced. You get so much for so little.

Basically, what I am trying to say is that if you need web hosting, Site5 is where it’s at. I’m not going to lie, I do make money off of each person I get to sign up. I wouldn’t be doing this, however, if I didn’t actually like Site5. I absolutely love it, I wouldn’t recommend any other place. So, if you do decide Site5, please click on one of the links above so I do get money, because I need it. Thanks!
On another note, I bought two new domains. Look for those in the next few days.

My External HDD Experiance

Last Friday was my grad class’s fashion show. It was a 007 James Bond theme, which was really cool. Anyway, I was in charge of a lot of the technical stuff, but mostly the video. See, we had James Bond clips in between each performance, which actually worked out quite well. They were a great transition. Anyway, I had to rip the scenes from the movies, then chop them down and add fades etc. I had this all stored on my Maxtor OneTouch III 300GB hard drive, the project files, the original scenes, the new clips, everything. The Thursday before the event, Amy and I were remaking all the store names and I started to get suspicious of my drive. I had always been a little suspicious of it because it didn’t always work and what not. Well, I thought that it would be better if I had all the clips on my internal hard drive, so I started freeing up space. I needed 15GB, and I had no more than 2 GB free. I know, I know I have a lot of crap. I started deleting and got it up to around 6 GB free. I really didn’t want to delete my pictures, but I couldn’t find another way around it. I backed them all up to my iPod just in case and them deleted them. This brought me up to the required 15 GB. Friday afternoon rolled around, the afternoon before the fashion show. I started to transfer the clips and got them all. Whew, a big sigh of relief.

That nice stress-free feeling didn’t last long. I had made the order into a playlist in iTunes and was just going to do it all through iTunes. I switched the location of all the files and was ready to roll. I proceeded to watch some of the clips and it was then that my stress level skyrocketed. The clips were extremely choppy and definitely unwatchable. I tried copying one of the worst ones again. It turned out the same. I was really freaking out. I thought for sure that the clips were ruined and I was done for. I tried many different things, all with the same result. I tried to phone Amy and Hailey to ask how they would feel if there just wasn’t video. I really didn’t want it to come to that, but I was preparing for the worst. I tried some more things, each with the same stupid result. My hair was coming out in chunks now. I then thought to myself that if I could open the project files and remake the movies, except go straight to my internal drive, I might be able to recreate them. I tried that with the same output settings as I had originally had. Same result. I then tried just High Quality. It worked.

Now I just had to go through and redo all the video clips in the new format. I was a little scared that my hdd would crash at any second. I slowly got them all remade and was very happy. It was then that my next problem appeared. I opened up iTunes and my library was gone. I was able to recover most of it, minus about 200 songs (of which I mostly got back now). I had lost all my playlists and everything. I would have to start my Fashion Show playlist again. I realized that iTunes doesn’t like .dv files, and then started to stress again. What was I going to use? I decided to try VLC and found it had a playlist function. I was saved. I recreated my playlist, this time in VLC and was now ready to roll.

I rushed down to the school, as I was supposed to be there 2 hours earlier and quicky set up and tested everything. It worked great, in fact, it looked better than it had before the fiasco. Fashion Show went off without any major hitches. One group was a little late, but other than that it was phenomenal.

Well, I know this is pretty long, but whatever. Oh, and I was pretty mad at my hdd because it meant that I would lose 300 GB of stuff. I have now recovered most of the important stuff and it is still under warranty. I’m going to get everything off that I can, then ship it back to them for a replacement. I ran a diagnostics test and it says it is toast but that it is a manufacturer’s defect. Hopefully, I will get it back ASAP because I need it. I depend on it.